Corporate History Creation Process

Traditionally, corporate histories are commissioned to mark an important milestone or anniversary. Some companies produce a corporate history every ten years so that reporting is fresh and accurate. Others undertake a corporate history to mark the tenure of a CEO or to document a particularly exciting growth period.

If you are lucky, your company will have a historian with documents, photos and memorabilia that are invaluable in recording your company's history. Meeting minutes, company magazines, annual reports, speeches, newspaper clippings, monthly bulletins, and workshop and conference schedules are also essential to piecing together your history. More often than not, a company has old files stacked in storage rooms that must be sorted and reviewed. No matter how you choose to put together your project, the first step is compiling these bits of information and collecting them in a central location.

Most histories require months, if not a year-to-eighteen months to complete. If you have been assigned the task of producing a corporate history but know nothing about writing or designing one, it is essential to put together a strong but small team, both internally and externally, to oversee the history project from start to finish.

Internally, team members should have specific expertise, either about your company's history so they can help with research, or about the world of publishing, which includes graphics, printing and writing. If you plan to sell your history, you should include someone with a background in marketing. Externally, the writer, graphic designer and printer are essential in getting your book to print. At the beginning, the writer will create an editorial schedule based on the project's intensity and timeline. The graphic designer will simultaneously design sample layouts for you to approve. And the printer will provide detailed information about paper stocks, color printing, binding and delivery. With a strong team in place, your job as team leader becomes much easier. Your main responsibilities will be to keep the company up-to-date about the project, gather input from all team members, and monitor the project's process along the way.

Corporate histories have been produced a number of creative ways, and all are right. One way is to tap internal employees to write and produce the history. These employees know your company, its philosophy and image intimately, and using them keeps you from incurring additional costs to hire outside help. However, these benefits also provide good reasons to consider external resources. You will have to ask your writers and designers to double their workload or reassign some of their current duties until the history project is completed. An internal team will also adhere to your organization's tone and style but might not produce the fresh look you are after. And because employees are familiar with your corporate culture, it will be almost impossible to maintain objectivity.

Another option is to hire a writer and designer to produce the history. They will approach the project as outsiders with no assumptions about corporate image and tone, which often results in an objective, engaging, and thorough telling of your story. Also, they won't already know the "answers" and therefore will be more apt to ask questions. If you do bring in outsiders, make sure that you communicate your intentions clearly, that you collaborate on a timeline based on the work involved and the deadline, and that your personalities mesh.

When choosing a writer, look for someone who can communicate with a number of personalities. After all, this person will be conducting dozens of telephone, e-mail, and in-person interviews with employees, many of them upper management. Know in advance how you want the history to read. Because today's corporate histories have evolved from academic timelines to thoughtful, well-conceived stories that are interesting to read, it is more important to choose someone who can capture the tone and style you desire than someone who is an expert in your field. The writer can rely on your internal experts for accuracy, but internal experts rarely have the storytelling expertise to write a compelling history.

A third consideration is to hire a packaging company who outsources all steps of the project. This one-stop shop has a process for churning out histories, and it simplifies the production on your part. Standardization streamlines the process, but it limits creative input and restricts thorough reporting because of predetermined layouts or timelines.

1. Don't try to do it all yourself, or even with existing staff. It's too big a project unless your boss will reassign your current duties for at least six-to-eighteen months.

2. This is not the project to challenge existing vendors with. If they haven’t published a book, it’s best to work with experienced book writers and designers. Choose someone whose personality fits the company and can provide references from past projects. Hire a good writer, a good editor, a good designer and a good printer—and allow them to do their jobs.

3. Make a production schedule and set deadlines. Adjust them as needed. Build in two-to-four weeks of deadline padding.

4. If you are doing it yourself, schedule plenty of time to work on the project. However, many hours a week you plan to spend on your history book project, double it.

5. Stay organized. That way, even if or when you get behind schedule, you can more easily gain time back along the way.